Zhangping grew up in Dandong City in Liaoning Province, China. The city sits on the border between China and North Korea; here the Yalu River, which flows past the city and into the Korean bay, divides the two countries.
Dandong is a city rich in history, both ancient and modern. The Hushan (Tiger Mountain in English) Wall is located here. This wall, being the far Eastern end of the Great Wall, is also the eastern gateway into China, an important aspect of the city’s history. The strategic role the city has played throughout China’s long history, as the first line of defense on the eastern border, is something the artist has always felt while growing up in the city.
Having been a city on the edge of ever changing empires, Dandong has seen many struggles throughout history. Zhangping grew up amongst these ghost of past struggles, they were there around every corner for her to see, a reminder of the challenges in life people have faced throughout the years. In Zhangping’s art, the concept of life’s challenges and the struggles of the individual in society would eventually find its way, and become the nucleus of her work.
Zhangping began her formal art training in the Traditional Chinese Painting department, at Lu Xun Academy Of Fine Arts, in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. She studied both the traditional techniques of Chinese Painting and also the “Western” styles of painting (oil on canvas), becoming a skilled and versatile artist, able to work astutely in a multiple of medias. Today she continues to paint using both styles, “Eastern” and “Western”, sometimes cross pollinating one style with the other’s media.
After graduating in 1990 with a Bachelor Of Fine Arts degree, Zhangping continued to paint in Dandong until she moved to Beijing in 1993, where she has lived and painted ever since. In Beijing she maintains a painting studio, and, when she is not too busy with her work, she teaches at several of the cities’ Universities. Zhangping has exhibited her artwork in numerous shows, her most recent exhibitions have been at galleries in the famous 798 Art District of Beijing and NewYork.